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Philip Spiess
Chuck: Tell us about the connection between The Odyssey and "its place in the history of consciousness" (a new one on me). Although I did not actually read The Iliad, The Odyssey , or The Aeneid until college (the first two in Lattimore's translations, the last in Rolfe Humphries' translation -- all of which, I'll admit, I skimmed), I had known their stories from 6th Grade at Clifton School, when we had studied the Ancient World and I had acquired (through circumspectual "borrowing") -- and thoroughly immersed myself in -- my grandmother's copy of Guerber's Myths of Greece and Rome: Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art (1893). It has served me well over the years in matters of myth, and literature, and classical art, and I was stunned several years ago to discover that it had been recently re-issued in paperback. I mention this only because, of course, without having actually read The Odyssey, I was one of the writers and actors in our little 8th-Grade parody, The Oddity of Useless, in which many of you acted -- or acted out (cf. Dave Schneider).
Dale: Not only was Benchley writing satire, he was also writing about Middle School (or perhaps High School) boys, so the higher literature would not have applied -- though it does beg the question of what was expected of somewhat accomplished boys in the 1920s and 1930s (which was really the start of my inquiry into our own classmates' required reading). I myself really got into The Iliad with Edith Hamilton's prose narrative of the story, which is what we used with the 5th Graders when I was teaching Ancient Greek history in a private Middle School (we read it out loud in class, discussing it as we went along, and when we got to the descriptions of the destruction of Troy, I jumped up and started overturning student desks in the front row -- surprising the hell out of the kids and really irritating the art teacher in the room below). However, as to my own tastes (not being adept in reading either Greek or Latin), I'll take Matthew Arnold to read on almost any subject any day; I took one of my four doctoral exams on him and his work -- I love his writing and his attitudes. As to Joyce's Ulysses, the man was doubtlessly drunk when he wrote it (most say he was practically blind -- "blind drunk," I'd say), just like William Faulkner must have been when writing his books. I much prefer Joyce's Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (But I did see the great Irish actress Siobhan McKenna in a one-woman performance of Joyce and some other Irish authors, and the highlight of the evening was "Penelope's Soliloquy" from the end of Ulysses -- McKenna's monologue rendition of it made sense of Joyce for me for the first time.)
David: Have you ever seen "the rabbit in the moon," which is older than "the man in the moon"? When I was teaching Middle School, the kids wanted to know where the notion of the Easter Bunny came from (I had cautioned them not to eat the "little chocolate eggs" the Easter Bunny leaves on the front lawn), and I had no idea, so I researched it -- and found that it came from the ancient Eastern goddess Estra (after whom Easter is named), whose pet was a rabbit which she kept in the moon (she was a fertility goddess, after all). That night, coming home from the school, I was driving toward a giant rising full moon -- and, sure enough, there was "the rabbit in the moon" facing left, long ears streaming over its head at the top of the moon! Who knew? On another matter, how is that "Borax Museum" in Death Valley?
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The full eclipse.
